This week in Into to Religion we have been talking about Judaism. Previous to the talk I thought about what I knew about Judaism prior to the class lecture. I came to the conclusion that what I know about Judaism is from television, movies, and my former student teacher. Even though I had a little background knowledge I was not prepared for what I would be learning.
So, just to prove what I am saying, this is what I knew going in. Jewish people’s symbol is the Star of David and it is comparable to the Christian cross. Jews celebrate Hanukkah and it is similar to Christian Christmas. They light eight candles, one per night, during Hanukkah on a menorah to symbolize a story from their bible. Their bible is the Torah. Finally, they stand under hupahs at weddings. Now, let me point out that this information is not all accurate. Actually, my professor would flip at what I thought I knew. Like Hanukkah being like Christmas, that is totally wrong, but many non-Jewish people think that.
I learned a lot in out class lecture and realized I knew about more than I thought I did. First off, I am writing this entry as both an informative look at Jewish customs and traditions, but also as a comparison with Christian beliefs. The first thing we talked about was that Protestants especially don’t know much about their own religion and even less about others. This does not bode well for life in the world. It is hard to appreciate what is happening in the world as so much of what goes on in the world has religious overtones when we are uneducated about world religions as well as our own. An example of a recent activity with religious overtones is the talks between Palestine and Israel. The interesting thing is that the United States has a stated foreign policy to protect Israel even if they are attacked by one of our allies. I will get back to the religious aspect of their talks later in the blog entry.
So let’s get to the basics. First off, like Christianity, Judaism is a monotheistic religion. This means the Jewish people only have one god. To them, and other Western religions God is a personal god with human emotions and feelings. Because of this he has a personal name. Due to the third commandment (found in Deuteronomy 6:4) saying thou shall not take the lord’s name in vain, those who wrote the Hebrew bible decided to leave out the vowels of God’s name so no one would say it. Because of this his name looks like YHWH. When the Hebrew bible was translated where vowels were added back in the incorrect vowels were added in so no one would accidently slip up and say his name. This time his name looked like YaHoWaH and because Christians making the King James Bible didn’t ask, they assumed God’s name is that and that is how we get Jehovah. (You know, like Jehovah’s witnesses?). The reason the Jewish people did all of this is because they believe God is personal but his personalness is different than our personalness because he is still holy. Thus we aren’t supposed to use it. It is built into the commandments and thus it is religious law.
Jewish people still have services spoken in Hebrew. The shema is the central statement of belief in Judaism. It is their creed. If you go to a synagogue for every Sabbath you would hear this every week because it is that important. For Christians YHWH is translated into LORD in caps to signal to us that, that is his name. Shema mean “Hear.” It is as follows: Hear O Israel, YHWH is your God, YHWH is one! -Dt. 6:4. The Christian Bible is divided into two different parts, the Old Testament and New Testament. Jewish people call the Old Testament their bible because Christians added the New Testament. Thus, when talking about or to Jewish people the bible is never referred to as the old and new testaments. We will not call it Old Testament because it is the bible for them (Hebrew bible) it is also called Tanak. It is broken down into three parts: Torah, Neviin, and Ketuvim. Torah is first 5 books of bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). The Neviin (means prophets) and it contains most of the important names. Ketuvim means writings and it is the catch all containing books such as Esther and Song of Songs. The Jewish people believe the Torah is most important section. Even though it was not written first it is still the most important books. Tanak is central to Judaism because it is the story of God’s relationship with the Jewish people. It explains the covenant, a promise. There are four covenants to the Hebrew bible.
The first covenant is Noah. Many Christians know the story of Noah (god will never flood the world again). Genesis has two stories of creation and a few more stories in the Hebrew bible. This story, for those who don’t know it is about God being upset with the people inhabiting Earth. He feels the only way to make the Earth right is to cleanse it with flooding. Then god floods the earth but saves Noah and his family because he likes Noah and trusts him to do what he must. Unlike Christian beliefs, seven of each kind of clean animal and two of the unclean were permitted on the ark. Another correction to be made is the flood waters do not “rain” for 40 days. God opens the flood gates of above and below and the waters consume the Earth. After the flooding God feels bad about it and decides he will never do that again. We know this by the sign of his promise in the rainbow. This story is an Unconditional covenant meaning there is nothing for people to do just something for god to do and his promise is not contingent upon the people.
The second covenant is Abraham. He is old and has a couple of wives Hagar and Sarah. Angels come to him and tell him he is going to have many babies and descendants. Sarah gets the giggles because this is crazy at their age but sure enough he has 2 sons Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael is born of Hagar and Isaac is born of Sarah, the funny thing is that Isaac means giggles. He has been also Promised Land by God. He says leave Ur where he has been living all of these years and goes to Canaan. God promises that Abraham’s descendants will have that land forever as long as all of the men are circumcised. Because of this condition, it is a conditional covenant because if they do not do what is asked they won’t get to keep the land. Both sons are circumcised so they both have claim to the land. Because of this dilemma the land is split between the sons. From the descendents of Isaac we get Judaism and Christianity and from Ishmael we get Islam. These religions are from Abrahamic descent and thus the Israeli Palestinian conflict is very old. Everyone wants the claim to the land. That’s why these negotiations now are so important to understand. To this day both religions circumcise their males for religious reasons.
The third covenant is Moses. This covenant is a conditional covenant stating the God will be their god and not abandon the Jewish people as long as they follow his laws and commands. These laws include kosher law (found in Exodus and Leviticus) which tells us Jewish people can’t eat pork, mix milk and meat, only slaughter animals if it’s done appropriately, and so on. Worship law states the Sabbath (Saturday) must be a day of no work. This law is open to some interpretations many believe even simple things like pushing buttons or ripping toilet paper is work. Many people that abide by this law prepare ahead on Friday. There are other laws as well. All of these laws are all part of the Mosaic Law and God promises to stay their god as long as they do all of this. The Jewish people back in Moses’s time screwed up and because they didn’t hold up their end of the deal God decreed them not allowed in the Promised Land until their next generation.
The fourth covenant is David. David’s story is found in the Neviim. The gist of his story is God will take part of the land and on that part Solomon will build god’s house in Jerusalem (City of David). God’s house is established as the temple and the one place to make a Judaism pilgrimage. This is unconditional covenant because God doesn’t make any stipulations. This covenant is not really working out because both the king and temple are gone. The City of David was built on a hill and Solomon’s temple was destroyed by the Babylonians. Then due to the importance of this temple, the Jewish people rebuild the temple. The city continued to build upward. The second temple was destroyed by the Romans. All that was left was ruble, pieces of what use to be, and the Western Wall, other people called it the Wailing Wall. Non-Jewish people thought the Jews were crying and thus the term wailing, but actually the Jewish people were singing the Torah and praying. This temple spot is a contested sight because the Dome of the Rock (a Muslim mosque) is right next to the Western Wall.
After learning about all of this I did remember back to the stories from Sunday school such as Noah, Abraham, and Moses. I also really feel like I can relate to the traditions of the religion because Christians have traditions and customs too. Hopefully in the blogs to come I can compare the holidays and explain the differences between Hanukkah and Christmas. To find out more about Jewish covenants and such read the bible (Old Testament only). Also search Jewish covenants and look around. There is a lot of cool information out there.
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